There presently exist methods for facilitating text entry by gestures and information handling devices such as computer systems of various sorts which implement such methods. Such methods and devices are described in prior U.S. Pat. No. 7,250,938 (to which the interested reader is referred and which is hereby incorporated by reference into this disclosure to any extent necessary or appropriate to full understanding of what follows) and are commercially available under product names such as Swype and Shapewriter.
Such prior teachings provide a user input mechanism that allows a user to enter words as gestures on a virtual keyboard. The user input mechanism combines two existing and prevalent forms of user input: cursive handwriting and keyboard input. A familiar keyboard layout is generated and presented. A user then may use an implement, such as a stylus or the user's finger, to indicate characters in the display. Typically with a touch screen implementation, the implement will first touch the screen at a position of a first character in a word. The user will then move the implement along the surface of the display from character to character, spelling out a word. Character recognition is detected by either entry into the bounds of the virtual key box or alternatively by the relative shape of the word stroke. However the bounding of the key box can result in stroke patterns that are wildly different from each other so that multiple alternates need to be presented to the user in order to resolve ambiguities. A “choose the correct word” function.